


The Mind Has Mountains

by wobblyheadeddollcaper



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: AU, Canon Death, Demisexual Arthur, F/M, Injury, Kissing, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Mountaineering, Peril, Rock climbing, lots of climbing equipment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-30
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2017-11-04 14:48:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 16,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wobblyheadeddollcaper/pseuds/wobblyheadeddollcaper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rock climbing AU. From the grimy climbing walls of London to the snowy slopes of the Himalayas, Eames follows Arthur follows Dom follows Mal. (Finished after a long hiatus.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The smell of chalk and old sweat hangs heavy in the cooling night air. Arthur unwinds the tape from his fingers, dirty grey giving way to white before revealing the clean tan band of skin, standing out against the grimy calluses and scrapes on his hands. Arthur's kind of sick of bouldering all the time, but he doesn't know anyone in London and the climbing wall's 'find a partner' scheme keeps throwing up duds. He shudders at the very memory of Nash, who had been a special combination of pushy and clingy.

The last few stragglers are trying to eke out more time on the bouldering wall as the staff hang around, impatiently waiting to close up.

As usual there's some poseur with his shirt off, tattoos and rippling muscles on display, conspicuously failing on the one move of the problem that requires real planning. He's trying some remarkably creative solutions, heel hooks and off-balance pulls that make Arthur wince, but if he would just move his goddamn feet up...

He's walking over they before he quite knows what's happening. Tats is at the start again, grimacing at the route with focused frustration, trying to breathe it away. Angry climbing is careless climbing, inviting pulled ligaments.

"You need to move your feet up. There's a smear to your left." He touches the wall, indicating.

"Yeah?" says Tats shortly, and Arthur turns away, shrugging. None of his business. He shouldn't have offered, really - some masochists actually like to take days over figuring out a sequence of moves.

"Thanks, mate." Tats says, slightly less brusquely, and Arthur turns to watch the sequence, mantelshelf-palm-reach-stand, pull-smear-pivot-grab, swear at the tiny crimp of a hold that hurts your fingers and lever up to the finish. Tats drops like a ton of bricks, smacking feet first into the mat before falling backwards in exaggerated relief.

"Fun route. Thanks for the pointer."

"No problem."

Arthur turns away, getting off the mat to strip out of his tights and wad up his stinking climbing clothes, shrugging his jeans over his sweaty boxers. He doesn't feel like driving home, but he's not going to get less tired by waiting around. Six months in London have taught him that the roads don't get less hectic or the driving less irritating with waiting.

The next time he goes to the climbing wall - like methadone for heroin, really, sometimes he aches for the big walls of Arizona, the domes of the Rockies, even the crumbing limestone quarries of South England - he sees a familiar face.

"Dom? It's Arthur. From NYU?"

"Hey! Holy crap, man, what are you doing in England? I thought you joined the army or something." They hug briefly, university friends who meant to keep in touch. Arthur lost track of a lot of people on his first deployment, and regrets it.

"I did - got trained, quit after five. Got a freelance contract here doing personal defence training for Limeys. Kept climbing though, even put up some new lines at Joshua Tree on leave before my climbing partner - Anna, from the NYU club, remember? - got married and quit doing the risky stuff."

"That blows. I got married too, actually - no quitting, though, she'd kill me."

"Yeah? Congratulations. Is she here?"

Dom points proudly at the bouldering wall, where a slim, dark-haired woman is warming up on a series of minimal holds. She moves in perfect balance, barely breaking a sweat. As she leans out from the wall the fall of her plait and the line of her throat catch the light, and Arthur double-takes.

"That's- is that Mallory Miles?"

"Yes, it is. She goes by Mal Cobb when she's incognito." Dom is beaming smugly, and Arthur can't blame him. Mallory - named for George Mallory, the tragic mountaineering legend - is the only daughter of John Miles, the first non-Frenchman to become an Alpine Guide at Chamonix. Climbing since practically before birth, she followed and surpassed her father's career. She fronts for Scarpa and is way, way out of Dom's league in all ways - or at least, of the Dom Arthur met at NYU, the overly earnest guy carrying a little puppy-fat who was a reliable second. Looking at the new muscles on Dom's shoulders, the extra calluses on his hands, Arthur wonders what else has changed.

"You really married up." Arthur says, probably too bluntly. A small crowd has gathered to watch her.

"You're a fan?" Dom raises an eyebrow. Climbers don't exactly have celebrities. There are, however, a small number of professionals who through a combination of self-publicising and sheer manic dedication are generally well known by name if not sight. They tend to come up in stories that end with 'It was epic. That guy is insane. INSANE'.

"Don't play dumb, she's a legend. How in hell did you meet?"

"Paris. We both went through a whole week of pretending not to be rock-hungry before she snapped and dragged me to Font."

"Wait, that Annapurna record - was that you with her?"

"Best trip of my life, apart from the pulmonary oedema." Dom says blithely. Arthur socks him on the shoulder.

"Nice work, man. Seriously. You going to introduce me?"

Mal turns and strides towards them over the mat.

"Dom, cher, who is this polished American?"

"Arthur Lake. Dom and I were both in the climbing club at college." He sticks out his hand, and she takes it, lightly but with obvious strength in her fingers.

"Enchante."

"Trop gentile, madame Cobb. So what are you two doing in London?"

"Visiting my father's family. We had a small wedding-"

"-only your entire village, Mal-"

"-very intimate, so now I have to introduce Dom to all my English relatives and the Welsh limestone and the Peak District, for a few months. And then we go to America, perhaps to the Rockies, and see Dom's family."

"Rockies first?" Arthur teases.

"But naturally! I must do something to calm myself after the flight", she laughs, and if Dom wasn't looking at her with such obvious fondness Arthur would totally try to steal her away.

They meet up often in the next month. Arthur finally gets back on the rock, climbing with Dom, with Mal, with a succession of Mal's cousins and Dom's chance-met friends, and gets his edge back enough that he's not embarrassed to be climbing with the best. He learns that Dom's cooking still sucks ass, that Mal is a total bitch when she gets pushy about leading a climb, that neither of them can fix their battered car ('It's just the fan belt!' he says, and Mal kisses him on the cheek and asks him 'please not to explain, petit cabbage, just be magic and fix her').

His contract, training ex-policemen and demobbed soldiers how to bodyguard in at-risk locations, spotting riots, bombs and snipers before they happen, runs out in June, and he follows the Cobbs to their shabby Peak District cottage .

He doesn't notice, until he wakes up on their rented couch in Derbyshire and starts fixing breakfast, that he's settled into being part of their entourage. Harriet comes down first, an old friend of Mal's and something high up in the Women's Alpine Club. The four of them make a glorious day of it at Stanage, a miles-long stretch of gritstone outcrop, the rock brown and bearing him up with perfect friction against his too-clean boots. That evening he considers his savings and decides not to look for another job until the Cobbs leave. He can afford to take a holiday. He is surprised - and overjoyed, in his subdued way - when Mal invites him on her next expedition.

"We need your military bearing," Dom says mock-seriously, as Arthur sprawls in front of the fire in ancient, holey long johns. Mal snorts.

"We need your head for logistics. Dom will be organising the team, I will get sponsorship, but these things take time. Visas, flights etcetera I do not have time for." Mal has that considering look in her eye, the one that may presage genius (a flawless move over a tricky overhang) or disaster ('what if we put lemonade in the radiator?').

"It is time for me to go back to the Himalayas."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After Mal and Dom leave for the states, trailing good wishes like chalk dust, Arthur heads back to his flat and spends his time a) working, b) looking at Himalayan car hire and c) training like a motherfucker. He misses having people to climb with regularly, though Mal's friend Harriet comes to London from time to time and whisks him away for weekends in his freezing cold one-man tent at Llanberis Pass or Portland, listening to her and her (non-climbing) girlfriend talk in muffled voices in the next tent over. At the wall, he goes up and down the hardest bouldering problems he can find, trying to stay flexible.

Arthur sees Tats again at the wall, a few times, only remembering him when he discards his T-shirt. The ink is distinctive. They both tend to stay late, and even start nodding to each other occasionally. Arthur doesn't bother to ask his name, but does learn to recognise Tats even when he is wearing a shirt.

He starts sparring after work with some of his new students, grim-faced men who occasionally, when hard-pressed, fight dirty enough to remind him of his training days. The new contract is at an MOD-recommended training centre, so he sees a lot more soldiers. His hand keeps twitching like it wants to salute, but he represses it firmly.

One day Tats walks into his class while he's going over incendiary devices and their distinctions from explosives.

"Yes?" Arthur says, wondering why this random boulderer is interrupting a lesson.

"Eames. I'm on this course. Sorry I'm late." Arthur rolls his eyes. Of course Tats would turn up halfway through the first lesson.

"Sit down, I'll talk to you after we start the practical section. Don't look so happy, guys, they're only fake bombs." The class, ten men who all wish they were wearing uniforms, do that British laugh which is really just a slightly inflected exhale. Arthur takes what he can get.

After he's set them up in pairs with little black cans filled with wires and LEDs, he takes Tats - Eames - out into the corridor.

"Mr. Eames, it's too late in this lesson for you get a full recap. In future, arrive on time. Here are the edited highlights." He hands Eames the sheet for the class.

"Can I have a go at one of the bombs? Just for a laugh."

Arthur shrugs nonchalantly.

"Actually, I do have a spare."

As they go back inside the first of the dye-packs triggers and Jones gets a facefull of blue paint. Washable, of course, Arthur's not that kind of asshole.

"By the way, never believe anyone who tells you it's a only fake bomb. Harris, help Jones clean up." He sets the spare device in front of Eames, who looks - unexpectedly amused, actually. It's nice to see a man appreciate the neatness of his comeuppance.

Everyone bends over the boxes with renewed fervor.

Surprisingly, Eames disarms the bomb before the end of the class, though after everyone else. Arthur finds this interesting enough to ask Eames to spar with him. This gets a few groans from his usual sparring group.

"Mate, he's vicious. Like a chihuahua. Save yourself." Jones sounds pissed off, probably because he's still a little blue around the edges.

"I’ve never faced a chihuahua on the field of battle," Eames muses "so clearly I should try this." He meets Arthur's eyes.

"I hope you fight better than you climb." Arthur jokes stiffly as they walk to the gym. It's slightly strange to have someone from his climbing life thrown into his work. He prefers to keep the two separate.

"Ow! My wounded pride!" Eames looks him over carefully. "Of course, you're the Yank. My fellow after-hours boulderer," Eames explains at Arthur's side-eye, "I never got your name, so I had to give you one. Barely recognised you in mufti."

"I called you Tats." Arthur says.

"You like the ink?"

"It makes a statement, certainly."

"One day, I will force you to compliment me properly through my undeniable brilliance." Eames says lightly as he pushes open the doors.

"And on that day, Mr. Eames, I will buy you ice-cream in hell." Eames gets his gloves on and punches Arthur in the face before he can get his guard up.

They are clearly going to be great friends.

A few days later, at the wall, Arthur explains about the Himalaya trip as he tries to stuff Eames into a harness. Eames prefers to boulder, but Arthur needs to do longer routes or risk losing his stamina.

“You do know how to belay, right?” Arthur says, because when asking a favour, even from someone he doesn’t know that well, Arthur is obnoxious.

“If it’s worth my while.”

“The Himalayas. Mallory Miles. Trip of a lifetime.” Artur sighs. “I’ll... buy you a drink?”

“You’ll buy me a drink, and tell me who this Mallorie is and why you are following her charms over the seven seas.”

Arthur gapes, shocked that anyone has escaped Mal’s fame (he’s biased, but still), and proceeds to describe Mal’s achievements in blistering technicolour.

“And she’s married to your best mate.” Eames says, meditatively. Arthur’s suddenly aware that his praise of Mal sounds a bit naive.

“Yeah. Belay me, then?" Eames sighs theatrically and clips on a belay plate, threding through the rope Arthur hands him.

"You're on the rope. Climb when ready."


	2. Chapter 2

Arthur tries not to remember the expedition.

When he does, when it forces itself to the front of his mind, the same three scenes strobe in quick succession.

Mal ducking her head under the chill meltwater of the lake and emerging with a shriek, running out of the water jaybird-naked and saying, teeth chattering, 'At least I'm clean now", the day before her summit attempt.

The puff of snow on the upper slopes, resolving through hastily-snatched binoculars into a torrent of ice and rock.

Dom walking alone towards base camp two days later, his right arm dangling limply from a misshapen shoulder, turning Arthur's heart to lead.

When Arthur called from Lahore, because he had to talk to someone while Dom, poor bastard, told Miles and his wife, Eames had listened quietly, the crackle of the line obscuring the sound of London.

"I. Sorry, I don't know why I called. You didn't know her." Arthur says, scrubbing at his sleepless-gritty eyes.

"Arthur, are you stuck there? How many of you?"

"Dom needs rest after surgery. I. Yes. Us. The others went home."

"Right. Where are you sleeping? Do you have money for the hospital?"

And Eames had arranged wire transfers and new plane tickets back to the States, threatening every few calls to come over there himself if Arthur didn't get regular meals.

"I loved her." He tells Eames wretchedly, and Eames goes quiet for a few beats, and says -

"I noticed. Yes. I'm sorry."

Neither of them wanted to go back to England, where every rock whispered Mal's name. Dom was hollow, needing to be taken care of, not left to slide away, and that was something Arthur could do, a job Mal would have wanted him to do.

Even Eames couldn't pull Arthur back to London, and Eames was really the only tie he had there. Arthur paid him back and thanked him, trying to apologise in the spaces between his words for relying so much on Eames, who was after all just a few-months friend, who hadn't needed to reach out over three thousand miles and pull him to his feet but had anyway. Arthur, in a rare flash of insight, is pretty sure Eames will cuss him out for apologising directly.

"I'll see you around. I mean, if you're ever in the States. I'll send you my address. Or if you need a kidney or anything..." Over the static of the line, Eames made a sound, a blurry word or a laugh or a sob.

"Be well, Arthur. Call me." He doesn't, in all the fuss of repatriating and finding work, and then suddenly it's been too long to call without a reason.

Dom is living in San Clemente now, in a house near Arthur's flat-roofed condo. Arthur runs courses for former marines, the ones who've just got out and need something to do with their lives. Dom takes tourists hiking.

Arthur visits Dom most nights. They don't talk about her. They watch crap movies and Arthur gets Dom to come sparring with him sometimes. No climbing, not for months, until Dom drives them out to Joshua Tree and they ease onto the sun-baked red sandstone, as different as possible from the snowed-over limestone of the Himalayas or the grainy, grimed plastic of the London wall. It feels good, and that night Arthur spends half an hour in Dom's shower trying to pull it together. He's not allowed this. Dom's the widower. Dom gets to grieve first.

He heals, over the next few months. Dom doesn't heal, exactly, just scabs over.

Eames blows into town on an arid Friday, trailing the scent of the overpriced tequila they sell to tourists at the airport and knocks on Arthur's door.

"You sent me your address, remember?" He tells Arthur, who realises abruptly that his mouth is hanging open. He closes it and steps forward to hug Eames, who stiffens a little before accepting it. Right, British.

"Come in. Can I get you coffee-" Eames brandishes a bottle with an appalling sombrero-style lid "-Oh hell no. I'll get glasses out, but only for good tequila." They compromise on a choice of beers, cold from Arthur's fridge. Eames enacts the traditional grumble of the Englishman confronted with American beer so they go for Stella. Arthur secretly agrees about the American beer but will never, ever admit it.

"What brings you to sunny Arizona?"

Eames looks away, tapping on the arm of his chair. The air isn't cool. but at least out on the screen porch they get the occasional breeze.

"I wondered how you were. And Yusuf and I were heading to Joshua Tree anyway, so I thought I'd lighten your life with my presence. He's at the campsite, trying to discreetly distill cactus juice."

"I never thanked you properly," Arthur blurts. "For India."

Eames waves a hand.

"Less than nothing, darling, dismiss even the thought of it."

"Well, it meant a lot." Arthur realises abruptly that he's getting too intense. He does that, recently, not enough time with friends to polish his edges. He plays with his beer and tries to think of something to say.

"I finally got back on the rock last month, with Dom. We should do a few routes while you're here."

Eames doesn't do anything as marked as squirm, but Arthur catches it and gives him an out. He probably wouldn't have wanted to climb with a couple of rock-shy failures back when he was still good, after all.

"Unless you had something lined up. Wouldn't want to-"

"No, that would be-"

"Really I-" they both break off and look away. Eames recovers first, smiling at him ruefully.

"Arthur, want to come climbing tomorrow?"

"Sure. Sounds good." He smiles back.

Eames looks at Arthur's hands. "About Dom. Have you been keeping up with the gossip?"

"Not much. I know it's bad."

When people die climbing, when the mountains take their tribute of lives, everyone wants to know why. Mal's end had all the elements of a good story - young, beautiful, even called Mallory for goodness' sake, smart and fit and on her third Himalayan expedition.  
And she died alone on a mountain, and the only guy who knows exactly what happened, her husband, crawls back to camp and gives the barest account possible before he holes up in some desert town. Leaving everyone free to embellish and speculate. Of course whatever they made was going to be lurid, just short of libel. Climbers love gossip.

"It's awful, actually. You might tell him to get out there and defend himself."

"He's not strong enough yet. I barely am, and I wasn't-" Wasn't up there, wasn't married to her.

"You loved her too." Eames says, the words dragging out of his mouth unwillingly.

"Not like Dom did. She was just - one of those people. I don't know how to explain it." Eames looks up, something oddly hopeful flitting behind his eyes

"'Oh Captain, my captain?'" Arthur is actually surpised enough to laugh. Damn Eames and his bouts of perception.

"Something like that." He rolls it around his mind, never having thought too much about the categories of love. Mal, captain of her little band of disciples, Dom second-in-command. It fits. He would have followed her anywhere, but that isn't romance. Faith, maybe, or loyalty.

"I'm relieved, I must say." Eames picks at the label on his bottle. He seems to be about to go on, but shrugs and downs his beer instead. Arthur files that away for later.

"You know, if we're going to get an early start," Eames says suggestively, "You might as well come out to the campsite. Sleep under the stars? You can't possibly have work tomorrow."

"No. Even the marines don't ask for extra weekend training." Arthur finishes his beer. "Ok, sure."

The campsite is a clear patch of dirt among well-spaced, low scrubby bushes. There are two tents, one of which appears to have been abandoned. In defiance of national park guidelines, Eames wants to start a fire for the proper camping atmosphere, but Yusuf points out that a) there's very little dead wood, b) it's 20 degrees centigrade out and c) park rangers in the US carry guns.

"Which may not mean a lot to you, but they'll probably shoot me first."

"Arthur, is he having me on?"

"Maybe not the park rangers, but there's a lot of people packing heat who might not want a brushfire near their property."

They settle for something called a Tilley lamp, a relic of Eames' time in the limey equivalent of basic training, a gas stove, and a lighted mosquito coil. Eames and Yusuf break out the halal beef jerky and start a brew. Arthur raises an eyebrow at this spartan catering and drags his rucksack from the car, unpacking his food stash under the fading glow of the sunset.

He holds up a box of wine.

"You are in California, spiritual home of the American grape."

"Grapes are not American." Eames says, but holds out the plastic mug from his thermos.

"Count me out, but thanks. Wait, are those Dunkin' Donuts?" Yusuf picks up the package with a reverent look.

"Also the spiritual home of the Donut." Arthur says agreeably. There is silence as they eat their way through of Arthur's food pile. They then sit in satiated peace under the stars. Arthur thinks about how big the sky looks, but a burping sound from the car cuts off his train of thought.

"Ah, the still. Time for an aperitif." Eames rubs his hands together. Yusuf rolls his eyes. Eames uses a spoon to collect a few drops from a metal dish under a funnel, and consumes it with a contemplative air.

"Fuck! Ow! It's horrible," he wheezes, tears streaming. "Strike that, it's pure pain." Eames tries to scrape his own tongue clean with a piece of donut.

"I hope you don't mind me asking, but why the distilled cactus juice?" Arthur asks.

"S'not complicated." Yusuf says, mouth full. He swallows. "I'm not drinking the cactus juice. It is not halal, it's not even for humans. Only this madman would drink cactus juice. I'm just trying to make a usable metal polish for my gear."

Eames coughs. "You bastard, I thought you were aiming for drinkable!"

"I just said the cactus wasn't poisonous. You drew your own conclusions."

"This is revenge, isn't it?" Arthur says dryly, laughter lurking in his voice. "What did he do this time?"

"I am glad that the situation is clear to you. It saves so much explanation. Let me say only that we travelled here by car, via Tijuana, and draw a veil over the details." Yusuf shudders at some unspeakable memory.

"I am an excellent travelling companion." Eames protests.

"You're excellent at many things, Eames, but sharing a car with another human being for more than a day is not one of them."

"Arthur could do it."

"I went through SERE. I can in theory survive many things that I never, ever want to actually happen. Really, Tijuana?"

"I bet you'd love a road trip to Tijuana, really. I could buy you a donkey." Eames smiles winningly. Yusuf shudders again.

Arthur tops up their wine.

"You know, when I met him Eames was a boulder bunny. He barely knew how to tie on. I had to make him buy a harness."

"You converted me only because I was sorry for you. You kept moping around, missing holds because you were staring longingly at the lead wall. It was an act of mercy."

"And now Eames gets to stare at my arse all day, so I'm sure he must be grateful." Yusuf snorts.

"Well of course I preferred Arthur's arse, but needs must." Eames looks up at the stars. "I will admit," he says, voice hushed, "that the outdoor life has its compensations."

No one said anything for a while after that. The night sky wheeled overhead, glorious and uncaring. All wild places have in some way this quality, this magnificent pitiless uncaring beauty. We go into these places, Arthur thinks, to remind ourselves that we live our fragile lives all alone, for an eyeblink of time, and that we have to cherish every second. That's not sounding like such a bad deal, under a sky like this.

He can feel that he's getting kinda drunk.

Eventually Yusuf rolls to his feet and wanders past his tent, announcing that he's going to go for a piss. Arthur reluctantly goes to get his tent, and Eames helps him set it up. They linger outside it as Yusuf clambers in to his and Eames's yellow and lime excrescence. Eames goes and extracts a ratty 3-season bag and karrimat, muttering something about sleeping under the stars.

"Well. Climbing tomorrow." Arthur says, hoarse from the silence.

"Yeah." Eames says, scratching the back of his head. His karrimat coils folornly on the dirt behind him.

"If you get cold, you can come in with me." Arthur offers. He's got a bigger tent than the two of them, after all. "Quietly, if possible."

"Thank you!" shouts Yusuf from inside his tent.

"Thanks." Eames says quietly, smiling. "Sleep well, Arthur."

Arthur nods, not quite smiling back. He turns and ducks into his tent, zipping the door closed with a comforting rustle of nylon. He leaves plenty of room for Eames by the entrance as he lays out his sleeping bag.

Arthur wakes to the gentle sound of another human breathing, and the muggy heat of a closed tent under full daylight. He quashes a knee-jerk sense of urgency - they don't have to be out right away, this isn't an exercise or another nutball expedition. Instead of creaking up to dress and make breakfast, he rolls over and comes face to face with Eames. Asleep, he looks smaller. His full lips are pursed and in repose his face is stern, almost frowning. He has a hand tucked under his cheek, which means that he's going to have a perfect handprint on his face for a few minutes when he gets up.

Arthur, his brain still fuzzy from sleep, extracts a hand from his sleeping bag and pokes the corner of Eames' mouth. Instead of the flailing he was half expecting, Eames doesn't move except for his eyes, which flip open as if Arthur has hit a switch and stare at him assessingly for a moment before screwing shut.

"Oh God. Sunshine." Eames attempts to sound disgruntled, but his heart clearly isn't in it.

"Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey."

"You know, if you say that you're legally obligated to cook me breakfast."

"Is that the law now?"

"Yes." Eames makes pleading, hilariously insincere eyes at Arthur.

"You climbed into my tent in the night, didn't even put out, and now you want a fry-up?"

"That sounds so wrong when you say it."

"Put out?" Arthur is faintly surprised. Eames makes enough comments about his ass, after all.

"No, fry-up."

"Bloody, chips, lift, pavement, jam." Anrthur mangles his Anglicisms while he rummages for a shirt. "Sod, bugger, knob-end, waistcoat."

"Gah." Eames retreats into his sleeping bag like a tortoise into its shell.

"You have a handprint on your face, by the way." Arthur tells him, and unzips the tent. "I'm going for a piss."

"That sounds strange when you say it." Yusuf says, squatting by the tiny stove with a kettle and a patient mien. "Tea?"

Arthur considers mentioning that it's really too hot to drink near-boiling water. Even this early, the rocks around the campsite are warm to the touch. Yusuf has a certain intensity about him that suggests this might be a bad idea. Arthur's been to England. He knows how weird people can get about tea.

"Nah, thanks. Isn't it kind of... hot?"

"You absorb water more easily when it's warm. It will be a very dry day." Yusuf waggles his eyebrows encouragingly.

"I thought that the Brits were the tea nuts."

"They stole it from India."

"I heard that." Eames sticks his head out of the tent, hair standing up in five directions at once. "I'll have milk, no sugar."

While the two of them prepare breakfast, Arthur learns that Yusuf is a research physiologist.

"I got a medical degree and then decided, you know, I like problems. I like poking around in my own time. I get all the interesting patients no one else can fix, and I can always bugger off and go climbing on a slow day." He taps powdered milk into his tea.

"I teach bodyguard courses." Arthur says. "It pays the bills. And I can always bugger off and go climbing on a slow day." They smile at each other, and Eames sneaks up behind them to smack Arthur gently upside the head and tell him not to debase the language of Shakespeare. They argue about English dialects all the way to the rock.


	3. Chapter 3

Arthur doesn’t sleep particularly well for a week or so after Eames leaves. It makes him a little distracted, which means one of his trainees gets the drop on him in training - a near-unprecedented event that leaves him with bruised ribs. He is in a foul, foul mood as he heads over to Dom’s for pizza and beer.

Not that he wouldn’t have been shocked by Dom’s terrible plan under any circumstances, but he might have handled it better if he’d been less ragged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dom wakes up every morning like a drowning man. He brushes his teeth and wonders what would have happened if he had packed an extra gas canister, another ice screw, if he had been abseiling that pitch instead of Mal.  
He shaves carefully and with a sharp ache wonders if Mal would have borne his children in a year, or five years, and what such a child would be like now.

Today he has a plan, for the first time in a long time. He barely lets Arthur sit down before broaching it.

“I want to go back to Mal’s mountain.”

“What the fuck - do you have a head injury? Are you insane?”

Dom forces a smile, pretending that Arthur’s joking.

Dom-” Arthur drops his voice “-is this about the rumours, because they’ll blow over-”

Dom doesn’t want to hear Arthur lay out the slurs and insinuations for him. “I know what they say about me. I’ve known for a while, that’s not what this is about.” It’s mostly true.  
“I’ve been talking to this woman Ariadne - Miles introduced us at - last time I was in France.” His wedding to Mal. One of Miles’s protegees. “She freelances for Rock and Ice-”

“Tell me you aren’t thinking-” Arthur throws up his hands.

“-and she knows a guy we could get sponsorship from if we bring him along, Arthur will you listen to me!”

“Fine.” Arthur sits down, crossing his arms.

“An expedition to Himalchand, a small one, just six, two to dash to the summit. I know the route up, I’m the only one left who does.”

The last photo of Mal alive is of her at the summit of Himalchand, arms wild and grinning wide as if she had built the mountain herself. Most mountain accidents happen during descent.

“Me, Ariadne, a sponsor, and three others. Are you coming with me?”

“Like I’d let you pull this crazy shit alone.” Arthur responds automatically, and Dom’s shoulders loosen a little.  
“Why now, though? Why Himalchand? There are a thousand other mountains. Her - Mal’s body is still up there, Dom.” Arthur bites out.

That’s why, don’t you see? What if they find her and I’m not there? Dom nearly says, but he forces himself to stop and find some other way of saying it, something rational that Arthur will understand.

“I can’t let someone else get up there first. It’s - call it my way of laying her to rest.” He feels guilty even as he says the words, as though he’s betraying Mal. Mal never wanted to rest. Arthur nods slowly and they sit together in silence.

“The press is going to come down on this story like a ton of bricks, you realise. No one’s successfully climbed Himalchand since.” Arthur says, businesslike again.

“Ariadne can handle it.” Dom smiles. “You’ll like her - she’s a former gymnast, great sense of route structure. She did that Chogolisa ascent last year, where Terries broke his ankle. She wrote the article.”

Arthur narrows his eyes and nods, pulling out his laptop to start making spreadsheets.  
“If she climbs half as well as she writes... Call her. I’ll draw up a budget, see what sponsorship we need.”

Once Arthur gets behind the idea, Dom lets him handle logistics and turns to the thornier task of leading the damn expedition. Ariadne handles press - she is planning on writing her own exclusive, Dom knows, which makes her a fierce defender of the expedition’s privacy if only for now.  
Saito, Ariadne’s sponsor, pokes his nose into everything. Arthur is scrupulously polite, and clearly deeply annoyed underneath.  
Dom feels Mal’s presence at his elbow, a helpful ghost. Some of the tricks she used to lead people fall flat under Dom’s leaden tongue - he’s not French enough or not compelling enough to lead in her way - but he slowly finds the methods that work for him, borrowed and adapted to fit his quiet, serious self. He’s more focused than he used to be, less ready to smile.

Saito asks about the other expedition members. Dom shrugs and drops a few names, trying to prevent Saito from bringing in a second tourist to complicate things further.

Arthur sidles up and says, casually, “I might know a doctor we can take. He climbs. And there’s this other guy who can be a sixth. Neither of them are likely to push for first shot at the summit.”

“I’m a research physiologist - I haven’t touched a patient in years!” Yusuf protests over Skype. “I can brush up a bit - “

“The doctor thing is mostly to get us over some legal hurdles.” Arthur says bluntly. “No one is expecting high-altitude surgery from you.”

Dom leans in. “Consider this an opportunity for the holiday of a lifetime.”

The next thing Dom knows Yusuf and Eames are camping on Arthur’s floor and have formed a subcommitee to plan a warm-up trip up one of the smaller peaks near Himalchand. Dom is somewhat blindsided, rusty at meeting strangers, and it’s possible he overreacts when Eames questions his assessment of the fuel quantity they’re going to need.

“Have you even been to the Himalayas? Because if we work from that estimate we’ll run out in a week.” Dom snaps.

“I heard about your previous adventures.” Eames says lightly. “Just a question. I haven’t done the greater ranges myself.”

Dom bites his tongue. “Right.” He says, shortly. “You’re taking this as a chance to move up to the bigger peaks, then?”

“Something like that.” Eames smiles lopsidedly. He turns as Arthur walks in with a literal sack of teabags. “Arthur, if this is an attempt to win my affections, it’s absolutely working.”

“Tea is an unfortunate necessity at altitudes.” Arthur grumbles, biting back a smile.

“Apart from ‘unfortunate’ and ‘at altitudes’, I agree.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Eames got us out of India, Dom.” Arthur tells him in a quieter moment. “I know you don’t remember much about it, so consider this a heads-up.”

“Huh. I - how did I not know that? I thought you’d just, y’know, arranged everything.” Dom circles his hand, indicating the organisational powers of Arthur.

“I was in a pretty shit state.” Arthur says, looking away. “Not up to my usual standards of efficiency.”

 

Dom mentally kicks himself. Of course, he’d been grieving too - Arthur had been Mal’s friend, as dear to her as anyone. Dom starts to apologise, but Arthur brushes him off. Dom is more inclined to respect Eames’s judgement thereafter.

Packing is a nightmare, piles of food and rope and radios, first aid kits and spare tentpoles, ice axes and neon sleeping bags taking up all the floorspace in his house. Looking at maps and guidebooks of the Himal range, Dom begins to feel alive again. At night he dreams of the clear air of the mountains, acid-tasting air so thin it’s hard to breathe.


	4. Chapter 4

They make it through Delhi, through a series of increasingly rusted and creaking transport options, culminating in the hiring of three donkeys to ferry their gear to base camp at the foot of Himalchand. Dom gets louder and less agreeable. Arthur tries to move him on whenever he stares too long at a rock, a horizon, a flower. He too can hear Mal round every corner, stretching his nerves as taut as a bowstring.

Thanks to Ariadne’s story-telling instinct, they end up at the same base camp site. Not like there are many options anyway, but Arthur can see the way she watches Dom. He’d respect her professional commitment more if it wasn’t so cruel. She may call it catharsis in her story, but Arthur imagines that Dom must hurt as he himself is hurting.

He takes Dom out of camp for a training climb, a scramble up a route the other side of the lake from Himalchand. The air is supernaturally clear, the crunch of their boots against earth ringing in the silence.

“You hear her too, right?”

“No,” Arthur says. “I remember her.”

“That’s what I meant,” Dom says, the pause so infinitesimal Arthur can pretend he imagined hearing it.

“You ready?” Arthur asks.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Because you have to lead them, Dom. If your head’s not in it-“

“My head’s been nowhere else for the past year,” Dom says sharply. “I can do this. I need to.”

“Okay then,” Arthur says. “Just…” He can’t think of any way to end that sentence. ‘Don’t get anyone killed’ would be unforgivable. ‘Stay safe’ would be patronising.

God, he misses Mal. She loved the lake, the glittering water. She loved the shitty yellow limestone bands in the rock, crumbling but giving holds to a delicate climber like her that vanished under Arthur’s grasp. He breaks a lump of it between his fingers, the rock dust smearing into the whorls of his fingerprints. Mal would know what to say.

Dom claps him on the shoulder.

“It’s going to go,” he says, staring at Himalchand and its mirror image in the lake. “We’ll make it.”

*

Eames takes Arthur to one side on day three at base camp, on the pretext of needing a second opinion on possible run-off from the latrine site.

“How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Arthur says dismissively, walking along the lake shore. Eames puts a hand on his arm.

“I haven’t heard you use a polysyllabic word since Delhi, Arthur.”

“Extremely fine. I can’t smell any shit, where was it?”

“There’s no run-off. I wanted to talk.”

“Is there a problem?” Arthur says, immediately on high alert.

“You tell me. Dom’s got Ariadne and Saito hanging on his every word, but he’s starting to sound like a bullshit artist to me.”

“Dom knows what he’s doing,” Arthur says, but it sounds weak even to him.

“Technically, yes. But you and I know he’s got to get a feel for the weather patterns before we push further than camp two, and he’s started talking about doing single-trip Alpine style ascents-“

“Oh fuck-“

“-quite, and setting all three camps up at once-“

“I’ll talk to him.”

“That – that wasn’t actually what I wanted to say,” Eames says. He sits down, cross-legged. After a moment Arthur sits down opposite him.

“How are you doing, Arthur?”

Arthur wants to say fine, but he takes a deep breath first, then another. He’s still acclimatising to the low oxygen levels at this altitude. At night up here in camp, he can hear the team breathing, tracks each person as their breaths slow, stop, then start again as sleep apnea cycles around. He guesses he hasn’t been sleeping much.

“I could be better. It’s… reminding me of the last trip. Just the location.”

Eames nods.

“I haven’t been biting your head off, have I?”

“A bit,” Eames says, shrugging. “It comes with your territory, I don’t mind.”

“Sorry.” He dredges up a rueful smile.

“You can talk to me. I know you’ve been taking care of Dom. I’d like to do the same for you.”

“Why?” Arthur doesn’t mean to ask, the question just bursts out of him like a cork out of water. Eames’s gaze flicks to his mouth, then away.

“Oh, just in the name of keeping expedition sanity levels relatively high,” Eames says lightly.


	5. Chapter 5

Arthur gives Eames his chocolate bar from the day’s rations, amounts carefully worked out months ago in warm California sunshine. Eames looks delighted.

“You don't need to buy my affections, but it's working,” he says giving Arthur a friendly shoulder-bump. Yusuf makes a choked-off sound.

“I’ll settle for a hand with the camp three supplies,” Arthur returns. Since the lake he’s felt… different around Eames. Closer, perhaps. He doesn’t have too much time to examine the change in his feelings, what with persuading Dom to stick to the goddamn plan rather than trying a summit push from camp two. He snaps at Ariadne and has to apologise.

When it comes to organising the teams for the summit, he surprises himself and Dom by splitting them into different teams.

“Eames and me will ferry supplies to camp three, then down to two. Dom and Saito up from two to three with a half load, then summit attempt one. Ariadne and Yusuf ferry up from one to two. Eames and I then try two to three to summit. All weather dependent, of course. If it holds, Ariadne and Dom can try an alpine push after that.”

Dom nods slowly.

“Sounds good, but I thought you’d want to be on the first push. With me.”

Arthur shrugs.

“Saito should get what he’s paid for. Besides, no sense in having all the previous experience on the same team.”

“Sure, sure,” Dom says. “You’re right. As long as we’re okay.” He glances at Arthur. “I know I haven’t been the easiest friend, and you’ve been, well, I don’t know what I would have done. Without you.”

Arthur punches him on the shoulder.

“No problem, Dom. Don’t fuck up the mountain, yeah?”

“Sure, just for you,” Dom laughs. “Cause otherwise I was planning on trying it naked and upside-down.”

“God, that mental image is going to give me nightmares.” Arthur shudders.

Eames nudges his shoulder against Arthur’s while they go over the packs for the camp two supplies. Saito bought colour-coded sacks, red, blue and yellow, which were promptly assigned at random to the many different supply groups in Arthur’s increasingly tatty spreadsheet (three camps plus second supply runs plus summit) and marked up with a rainbow of different electrical tape colours.

“You seem more cheerful.”

“Dom and I had a chat. You want to try for the summit with me?”

“Really?” Eames looks slightly stunned.

“Dom and Saito get first crack, but I think we have a better chance.” He grins at Eames. “If you’re up for it.”

“Yes, that sounds just perfect,” Eames says, grinning back. “Bet you’re glad you taught me to belay now.”

“I am, actually. This way I know you’ve been told which end of the rope to hold.”

Arthur’s been watching the mountain for a week – they all have, but Arthur has a meticulous eye. The mountain weather is clear and calm in the mornings, winds picking up in the afternoon, kicking up snow. The winds carry warm air up from the south, and so a light snowfall – rain up to camp two – can be expected as it hits the cold mountain air, around evening. Nights are clear. The monsoon isn’t due for months. This is their window, he can feel it – if they can just keep it together long enough to make the ascent.

“Arthur.” Eames sounds like he’s saying it for the second time.

“What?”

“I just wanted to say – it’s been a good adventure. This expedition.”

“The best is yet to come.”

Eames spits. “Knock on wood if you’re going to say shit like that.”

*

Dom and Saito leave, and the next day Arthur and Eames are loaded up like pack mules for their three-day run to camp three.

“It’s like the bloody infantry all over again,” Eames grouses.

“Smells better,” Arthur says. “In the US military one guy with hideous toe-fungus is issued to each team as standard, to keep us mean and battle-ready.”

“We had Snoring Brian. He got his own tent, on the grounds that if the enemy attacked the lone outpost the cessation of the noise would be sufficient warning for the rest of us. He sounded like a lawnmower making tender love to a sewing machine.”

Arthur laughs, like he always does for Eames’s stories, and looks up to see Eames tanned and smiling in the early morning glow, not yet light enough to turn Eames’s hair to gold in the sunlight. It would be soft under his hands, he thinks, and then experiences an abrupt sensation of vertigo as he discovers that he wants to reach out and touch Eames, fist his hands in Eames's hair and pull him in for a kiss.

“Well, shit,” he murmurs, leaning over his pack, trying to catch his breath. It’s not just some random moment of desire, he doesn’t bother lying to himself about that. How long has he been falling for Eames? His subconscious has chosen the worst possible moment to come clean, because they’re going to be roped together, literally, and sleeping in the same tiny tent for the next week climbing this fucking mountain.


	6. Chapter 6

Himalchand is punishingly steep. Arthur cuts a step in the snow, pauses, steps, cuts, trying to keep the rhythm. Below him Eames is doing the same. They haven’t reached the first climb yet, and it’s already midday.

Arthur hears a rumble above. He jerks up to see a puff of snow on the higher slopes, déjà vu, and for a horrible moment he’s back in time.

“Avalanche!” he yells at Eames, and half climbs, half skids the few steps towards him, grabbing his coat.

“Shit,” Eames says, like a prayer. He drags Arthur sideways, away from the main slope. The avalanche is already petering out though, burying itself in the col between the east and west ridges before it gets to them.

“Where’s Dom?” Eames says urgently.

“They should be between camp one and two,” Arthur says, scanning the slope. “That’s – fuck, they’re okay, they should be okay. Up the west side of the col.”

Eames narrows his eyes against the dazzle of the snow. “I’ll radio base.”

“Yeah,” Arthur says, lightheaded.

Eames confirms that he and Arthur are fine, and that Saito has also checked in.

“We’ll radio at camp one. Team two out,” he finishes, and turns off his radio. “Arthur – Arthur, darling, look at me. You’re fine. We’re all okay.”

“Yes,” Arthur confirms, concentrating on slowing his breathing. “Thanks.” He waits a moment. “Darling?”

“Just getting your attention,” Eames says, looking away, and fuck, Arthur’s been blind. This isn’t just him. Eames wants him back.

Arthur has a split second to consider that this is the worst place in the world to make a move, that they’re going to be exhausted by the time they make camp, that there’s still a climb in front of them, that they won’t be able to –

Arthur fists a hand in Eames’s jacket and kisses him, a quick press of lips tasting of sunscreen and sweat, made sandpaper-harsh by the stubble they’re both growing.

“Fucking finally,” Eames says hoarsely, when Arthur pulls away. “You have the worst timing, pet.” He’s smiling as wide as the sky, though.

“Better late than never,” Arthur shrugs.

“Oh, absolutely,” Eames purrs. Arthur can feel himself blush under Eames's gaze. He picks up his ice axe.

“Want to climb this fucking mountain with me, then?’

“Your foreplay needs work,” Eames says. “Yeah, let’s move. Last one at camp one has to make the tea.”

The first climb is one Arthur’s done before, on the last ascent. He readies his gear, ice screws clinking together against his legs, and drinks water, filling the canteen back up with snow.

“On belay,” Eames says. “When you’re ready.”

“Climbing,” Arthur says, and forgets everything except the route in front of him. The ice is good, shadowed so the surface is only a little slick. His crampons bite as he kicks upwards, skirting a glittering curtain of icicles. The rock lurks like a submerged behemoth underneath the ice, a black blur that presses up centimeters from the surface at points, recedes under the blinding white surface at others. Arthur skirts the rocks, keeps to the deep grooves of ice. The main crackline peels off to the left, so he has to strike upwards for the last twenty meters. He stops and puts in two screws before he continues.

The top is a gentle curve of snow, gradually growing more horizontal. He puts in an anchor, then trudges back down to a point where he’ll be able to at least see Eames on the final section.

“Safe,” he yells, and tugs the rope. He gets an answering tug. He carefully unscrews his belay device- every movement is so much more clumsy up here, deliberate care is needed for small things – and gets Eames on the rope.

“Ready,” he calls, and tugs the rope twice. He gets another two tugs, and takes in the rope until it’s taut, Eames’s weight pulling him down into a groove in the snow. It’s so beautiful up here. Exhilaration makes every moment sharper, crystalline like the sheen of the ice and the far-off glassy surface of the lake, far below them now.

Eames tops out, the ice screws he’s collected on the way up tinkling like bells as he moves. The rasp of his nylon clothing is loud after the stillness of belaying.

“Camp one is just there,” Arthur points up the slope, north-west. It’ll take them a couple of hours. The afternoon wind, a faint breeze at the start of the climb, is rising now.

“Nice,” Eames says.

They keep quiet during the climb, not much extra breath for talking. Arthur doesn't want to break the silence anyway. It feels good, what Mal used to call the holy silence of the highest hills, a spiritual thing. Behind him Eames is moving steadily upwards, the only other human within a day's travel, and Arthur can tell they share the sense of a golden moment.


	7. Chapter 7

The afternoon snowfall comes down just as predicted shortly before they reach camp one, the light fall whipped up by the wind into a stinging blizzard. They pitch the tent and get their crampons and helmets off before squirming into their sleeping bags. No point taking any other clothing off. Arthur fiddles with the stove and curses, his fingers numb and unresponsive.

“Frostbite?” Eames enquires, flexing his gloved hands.

“Just chilled. We’ve got vacuum-packed stew tonight, if I can just – fuck,” Arthur says, as the stove wobbles. The light coming through the yellow tent walls is dimming as the sun sets. Arthur puts his headtorch on and everything brightens and turns blue in the LED light.

“Give me your hand,” Eames says. Arthur does, and Eames raises it to his mouth, giving Arthur plenty of time to see what he’s planning before he opens his mouth and closes his lips around Arthur’s bare fingers.

Arthur makes a bitten-off noise of pain – the heat is fierce against his cold fingertips, which are warming up so quickly it hurts. Eames makes an enquiring noise.

“Don’t stop,” Arthur says quickly, and Eames closes his eyes and sucks a little on Arthur’s fingers, the four of them crammed awkwardly in his mouth. Arthur rubs his thumb along Eames’s jaw.

Eames pulls off Arthur’s fingers with a pop and kisses the tip of his thumb.

“Go on then, get the stove working.”

Arthur does, feeling pleasantly unreal. He’s pressed up against Eames – the tent is small, and Eames is warm and solid beside him. The roar of the gas bottle is muted by the wind outside, and Arthur pulls himself together enough to time how long they use it for. The more they can leave in the gas bottles, the more margin they have if something goes wrong.

The stew is better for being hot, washed down with over-brewed tea. The effort of the day catches up to Arthur as he finishes his cup, and he can’t hold back a yawn.

“Tired?”

“You’re not?”

“It’s been a big day,” Eames agrees, burying a private smile in his mug as he drains the dregs of it. “All right, let’s turn in. Same tomorrow.”

Arthur leans over and kisses him, his chapped lips catching against Eames’s as he opens his mouth, flicking his tongue over Eames’s teeth. Eames kisses back with enthusiasm, till Arthur slows down, drawing it out.

“This is not a good way of getting me to sleep, Arthur,” Eames says huskily. “How long?”

“Me wanting you, or me knowing you wanted me back?” Arthur asks, pressing his face into the polyester fleece-covered side of Eames’s neck.

“Both.”

“This morning, and just after the avalanche this afternoon.”

Eames is silent for a long moment, and then starts to shake with laughter.

“What about you?” Arthur asks, a little stung.

“I – look, don’t get all bent out of shape about this, okay, it’s not as creepy as it sounds.”

“Shoot.”

“When the first dye pack exploded in that fucking UXB class you taught, and… this afternoon.”

“When – that was years ago!”

“It wasn’t – look, I haven’t been pining or anything, I just thought you were attractive. Then I thought you were in love with Mal-“

“I’m gay!”

“I didn’t know that! For a Yank you’re shockingly buttoned up.”

“I had five years in the Marine Corps,” Arthur bites out, feeling unaccountably annoyed.

“Hey, pet, just – it’s not an insult,” Eames says gently. “I just didn’t think I had a chance.”

“You do. If you want it,” Arthur says seriously.

“Oh, I want it,” Eames says fervently. “But, good Christ, your timing-“

“I know,” Arthur agrees. The mountain is not going to leave them with spare time, or spare energy, for sex. They can just barely take off enough clothing for a quick shit outside without getting frostbite.

“I’m going to go nuts,” Eames says.

“Anticipation getting to you already?” Arthur says dryly. “We’ve got the east ridge tomorrow, it’ll take the edge off. We should probably rest,” he adds reluctantly.

“Sleep well, you sarcastic bastard,” Eames says, and plants a sloppy kiss on his cheek before huddling into his sleeping bag, pulling the hood up over his head until only his mouth and nose are uncovered. Arthur does the same, leaving a little more space for his eyes.

“Sleep well, Mr. Eames.”


	8. Chapter 8

Arthur wakes up slowly, warm except for the tip of his nose. In the night he and Eames have shifted to curl up like neighbouring parentheses, Eames draped over Arthur’s back and breathing onto the sleeping bag at the nape of Arthur’s neck. Eames makes a protesting grunt as Arthur leans back into him.

“Wha-.” Eames moves away. Arthur feels the chill of his absence all down his back.

“Morning.”

“Sorry,” Eames says. “I think I iced up your sleeping bag.”

Arthur peels himself off the ground and works his arms out of the bag. On the back of the hood there is indeed a small patch of ice where the water in Eames’s breath has condensed and frozen overnight. He must have pushed it against Eames face when he leaned back.

“Huh,” Arthur acknowledges, chipping the ice off and starting on making breakfast – tea again, and some godawful granola bar Ariadne had managed to scrounge up as part of a sponsorship deal. Eames packs up the bags as Arthur packs the stove, and they put on their helmets and crampons again and collapse the tent.

It’s stunningly bright, the sun reflecting up off the fresh layer of snow crunching under their boots. Arthur reapplies his sunscreen and jams his sunglasses more firmly onto his face. There’s the click of a camera, and he turns to glare at Eames.

“Ariadne wants pics for her article,” Eames explains. “You looked very heroic, don’t worry,” he adds, packing the camera back up.

Arthur snorts.

“We’ll look a lot more heroic from the top of the ridge. All good?”

Eames looks over the site. The food and gas canister dump is covered again, the tent packed.

“Site clear.”

“Roger that,” Arthur says, and starts walking.

The ground gets steeper and rockier as they go up the lower east ridge, towards the col. Dom and Saito should be heading towards camp three, nestled just at the base of the east arête where it meets the col. A mountain the height of Himalchand should only have two camps – Mal and Dom only set up two camps – but the upper east arête is an unforgiving route, exposed and time-consuming. Getting up to the summit and back down to relative safety is a full day.

“How far did you go last time?”

“The col,” Arthur says shortly. He’d been taking supplies to camp two, and the weather had been shitty, flurries of snow and ice lacerating his exposed face. He’d descended to base camp again before Dom and Mal had stared their summit attempt. Dom had climbed down most of the mountain alone afterwards. “Mal died descending the east arête.”

“I heard,” Eames says. They cut steps in silence. Cut, step, pause, cut. Arthur looks out across the glacier they walked up to get to the mountain and sees an eagle soaring below them, every feather blackly outlined against the grey-dusted ice.

“Look!”

Eames follows his pointing finger.

“Look at that,” Eames says wonderingly. The Himalayas are all white and grey and searing blue around them. Himalchand looms over them like a threat.

“It can’t get much to eat up here.”

“Maybe he’s after the food at camp one.”

Cut, step, pause, cut. The rope between them goes slack and taut, slack and taut, dragging over the snow.

There’s an ice wall at the top of the lower east ridge, leading up to the col. Arthur takes his rucksack off and starts laying out the gear, switching his walking axe for the two lighter climbing axes.

“I can lead this one. If that’s okay?” Eames asks.

“Sure,” Arthur says, surprised. He gets out his belay plate as Eames tools up. “Aim right when you can. You got the deadman anchor for the top?”

“Deadman,” Eames says, waving it at him. “One tug for safe, two for on belay. Kiss for luck?”

Arthur leans in and kisses him on the nose, leaving a lip-print in the greasy sunscreen. He wipes a hand over his mouth. Eames gives him a look.

“Get moving, Eames. It’s not going to get shorter.”

Eames darts forward and kisses him on the lips, then steps straight onto the ice, kicking his crampon points into the vertical wall to get purchase.

“See you up there.”

Eames doesn’t climb with the economy of motion that Arthur cultivates, or the balletic grace of Mal, or even the aggressive, dynamic moves Dom favours. He has a kind of poise, leaning and curving upwards in a style that conserves energy while making full use of every hold. It’s a boulderer’s trick, a style born of training to climb twenty feet on three holds and a little friction, but Arthur has to admit it’s effective. It’s also beautiful, and he remember as he thinks this that it isn’t the first time he’s called Eames beautiful in the privacy of his own head.

He remembers California, how Eames had stripped down to his shorts in the heat, the way his muscles slid underneath his tattoos. He can’t imagine now how he’d remained unmoved. So many years pushing down desire had made him comfortably sexless, perhaps – though his sex drive had never been strong, even before the army.

Eames moves round the corner of an icefall and is lost to view. Arthur keeps the rope flowing upwards, not to tight, not too loose, stopping and starting as he feels Eames move.

He does want to touch Eames, though, to feel all that strength and those quick, steady hands - Eames seems like he would know what to do, and wouldn’t laugh at Arthur if he get it wrong through lack of practice. Arthur could trust him.

There’s a tug on the rope, and an indistinct shout. Arthur puts Eames out of his mind, preparing his gear, checking his knot and squinting up at the route. He barely notices the two pulls on the rope, except as a brake released. He takes a deep breath and swings his ice axe, the teeth biting into the ice with a satisfying crunch.

“Climbing!”


	9. Chapter 9

“Arthur!” Eames calls. Arthur stops and waits for him to crunch his way up the snow slope.

“This trip,” Eames says, “Dom and Saito were going to be doing two to three today, while we do one to two, right?” Their original plan had shifted a few times. Arthur had to write the final plan down for distribution.

“Yeah. Then we restock camp three while they try for the summit, then we go down to two while they come back to three, then we cross paths between two and three when we make our bid.”

“It still seems needlessly complicated,” Eames says, squinting upwards. “Camp three is before the ridge, right?”

Arthur turns and scans the skyline. On the ridge, there is an almost-imperceptible flicker of red, one tiny moving dot. It disappears as Arthur looks at it.

“Did they fucking levitate up there?” Arthur says viciously, pulling out the walkie-talkie. “Base camp, this is team two, come in, over.”

“Team two, this is base camp.” Ariadne’s voice is crackling with static. “Status?”

“Where is team one, over.”

“Team one should be going up to camp three.”

“We see movement above camp three. Call and check.”

“Roger that, will contact team one and get back to you. Out.”

“That fucking moron,” Arthur says. “What the fuck does he think he’s doing? They don’t have supplies at three for the trip down.”

“Maybe they dropped supplies there.”

“If they’ve gone from two to above three by now, they’re not carrying enough.”

The radio crackles on.

“Team one are about an hour below camp three. Are you sure you saw something?”

Arthur meets Eames’s eyes, confused.

“We both saw it,” he says faintly, then stronger, “We both saw a flicker on the ridge. Must be local wildlife. Thanks, base camp, over and out.”

Eames watches him repack the walkie-talkie, frowning.

“How far to camp two?”

“Couple of hours, maybe three. We should get going.”

“Do you really think it was wildlife?”

“What else?” Arthur is trying desperately to remember what colour Mal was wearing when she set off for her final mountain ascent. Was it red?

“Mal fell,” Eames says, looking studiously at the snow. “So it can’t be her… remains, can it. Can it?”

“No,” Arthur says. He wishes he felt relieved. Who knows what actually happened up there, or where Mal’s body had landed? Dom wasn’t exactly a reliable witness. “Let’s-“

“Yeah,” Eames says, and moves up past him to take the lead.

*

They don’t talk much that night, exhausted by the climb. Eames kisses Arthur once, almost absently, before rolling over and falling asleep between one breath and the next. Arthur doesn’t sleep well despite his exhaustion. Bad dreams, maybe, though all he remembers on waking is a smear of ugly chaos, like a bad taste in his mouth.

“Short day today,” Eames says cheerfully.

“Yep.” Arthur stuffs his sleeping bag into its sack with unnecessary violence. Up to three to leave supplies and then straight back down here again. At least camp two is well stocked, courtesy of Yusuf and Ariadne’s supply trip up here before the main push.

“Air’s pretty still,” Eames says, then spits into the snow. Neither of them are superstitious men, but up here luck – more precisely, ill luck – seems like a tangible thing. Mountains are traditionally homes to gods, spirits, and ghosts, and Arthur pushes that last thought violently away. Not ghosts. He doesn’t believe in ghosts.

They pack up the camp quietly, Eames giving Arthur space – or possibly Arthur is being cantankerous enough that Eames is trying to avoid him, he can’t tell.

“Woke up on the wrong side of the tent,” he says, not actually apologising.

“Better luck tonight,” Eames says peaceably.

“Hope so.” Arthur squints upwards. A drift of cloud is moving between them and camp three, so the upper ridge is temporarily obscured. He quashes the urge to wait, to see whether Dom and Saito are moving yet. “Let’s go.”

It is, after all, a pretty short day. They get to camp three before noon, drop the supplies, and thus unburdened Arthur thinks they should get back to camp two before the afternoon snowfall. He glances at Eames. Even through the constant shortness of breath and awareness of danger at this altitude, the memory of Eames’s mouth around his fingers pops up at odd moments. There might even be time for-

“Don’t count your chickens,” he murmurs to himself. After three days of strenuous exercise in the same clothes, neither of them are particularly appealing. Arthur can’t do the ‘dashing mountain stubble’ look Eames is sporting; his facial hair tends towards wispy uneven patches of dark beard.

When they are a hundred metres off camp two, and the snow hasn’t started yet, Eames buries his axe in the ground with a determined _thwack._

“Right,” he says decisively. “Come over here.”

“What?”

“Now, Arthur, quick.” As soon as Arthur comes within range Eames reels him in with a hand on his collar, pulling him in for a kiss. It’s nothing like the chaste, weary acknowledgement of the night before. Eames is kissing him with focused intent, and Arthur moans a little, involuntarily. It’s been years since he’s been kissed like that.

“Proposition,” Eames says, breaking away, his voice strained. “It’s not awfully romantic, but – can I wank you off?”

“You smell good,” Arthur says, his brain not entirely online. Eames smells like honey and salt, sweetish.

“That’s a filthy lie, darling, but very flattering. Can I-“ His hand moves to cup Arthur’s crotch.

“Shit – get us to the camp and, and I’ll – I want to-“ Eames kisses him again, and they set off at a near-run. Arthur throws his rucksack in the general direction of the tent – leaving it up had been a brilliant, brilliant idea – and grabs Eames’s hips, stepping forwards into his embrace.

“This is dangerous,” he mutters against Eames’s collar.

“You didn’t come up this mountain for a safe life,” Eames says, fumbling between them to unzip his fly. Arthur half-laughs, startled.

“No,” he agrees, smiling, and helps Eames get their cocks out and together in one broad hand. It’s quick, electric and urgent, and when Eames bites down on the side of his neck Arthur gasps, shocked into coming. He barely has time to start to feel cold before Eames is wiping them both clean – well, cleanish – with some toilet paper, and they zip up and hustle inside the tent as the first snowflakes start to collect in Eames’s unfairly long eyelashes.

“Not bad,” Arthur says, grinning wildly. “For a first time.”

“Oh, ambitious.” Eames teases him. “What, you want to try it mid-abseiling next time? Under water?”

“I’ll settle for two hours in a bed with sheets. Or a reasonably soft floor and-“ Arthur yawns, surprising himself. “Make dinner? I’ll do breakfast.”

“Surprisingly sedate, but undeniably tempting. Yes, all right.” Eames gets the stove going. They keep looking at each other, fond and strangely shy when their eyes meet. Arthur thinks, fancifully, that it’s not just the stove keeping the tent warm while the rising wind howls around them.


	10. Chapter 10

It’s about eleven in the morning when everything goes to shit.

“Team two, this is base camp. Come in.”

“Base camp, what’s happened? Over.”

“Dom was cut off mid-call and team one aren’t answering their radio. We can’t see them through the scope either.” There’s a pause, filled with static. “He said he found Mal’s body, he was going to try to reach it.” Yusuf is distressed enough to be forgetting radio protocol.

“We’re going up now,” Arthur says grimly. “Will assess and report. Over and out.”

“Bollocks,” Eames says under his breath.

“I just hope he hasn’t taken Saito with him.” Arthur says shortly, putting his pack together. He feels incandescently angry. He’s spent all this time trying to keep Dom alive, and Dom has to go and try to throw it all away. Eames gives him a knowing look.

“It hasn’t been long. He may even have managed to get to it. Saito’s there to help.”

Arthur chokes on a laugh. God, that would be macabre, Dom dragging Mal’s body down the mountain like some twisted golden retriever.

They move up to camp three and onto the ridge. The wind is growing fierce, and the ridge is extremely exposed. They stay close together, keeping the rope between them short.

“We give it till three, then go back down to camp three,” Eames yells. “This is going to get stronger.”

Arthur makes an exaggerated thumbs-up. That gives them about an hour on the ridge. If they try for longer they might not have time to get down to camp three before the afternoon snowstorm, and Arthur wants very much not to be here when the wind picks up even more.

There’s no sign of Dom or Saito above them, but the ridge rises and falls so much it’s difficult to make out what’s ahead. Arthur tries to picture where that red flicker from yesterday was. Off to the left somewhere further on, he thinks, and about fifty feet below the ridge. Maybe in a gully.

They make it half an hour up the ridge before the going starts to get really slow. It’s slippery with uncovered ice, the rock crumbling away at the edges and treacherous as all hell.

“We need to turn back sooner,” Arthur says reluctantly. “Ten minutes.”

“Five,” Eames says. Arthur almost starts to argue, but then nods. He doesn’t have the right to risk Eames’s life to try to save Dom’s. They’re already doing more than is wise, or safe, and most climbers wouldn’t even attempt a search-and-rescue at this kind of altitude. He can’t ask any more.

Five minutes gets them thirty metres. Arthur stops and scans the ridge in front of them. Nothing. Little wisps of cloud are starting to fly past them, carried by the wind. If they lose visibility getting to safe ground is going to be a nightmare.

“Saito!” he yells, hands cupped around his mouth.

“Dom!” Eames shouts.

There’s an indistinct, high-pitched yell off to the left, down a steep slope. They look at each other.

“You belay,” Arthur says, Eames already looking for an anchor point in the rock. “And give me your jumars.” Arthur has a set on his harness, but if he’s going to need extras he wants them to hand. Jumars let you climb up a static rope – or in bad cases, haul someone else up.

“I only brought prussik loops,” Eames says apologetically. “To save on the weight.”

“Shit,” Arthur says, no bite to it. “Give them here, I’ll make do.” He can inch up a rope on prussik knots, little loops of cord tied around the main rope, but they’re fiddly as hell and taking his gloves off to tie the knots is going to hurt, maybe even set off frostbite.

“I’m safe,” Eames says, clipping Arthur’s rope into his belay plate. “Get going.” His voice is tense, urgent. The wind chill up here is no joke, Eames is going to get hypothermia if Arthur takes too long.

Arthur sets off down the slope in a scramble, fast as he can while not losing his footing. The ground steepens quickly, lots of drop-offs that force him to jump or skirt round them.

“Dom!” he yells. The answering shout is closer than before, and he steers towards it. He’s about halfway to the end of his rope before he spots them – Dom in his blue jacket, and Saito in yellow blotched with dark red on one shoulder. Neither of them are roped. Dom is half- carrying Saito, and he steers them towards Arthur. It looks like Saito is walking, a least. It takes a tense five minutes of manouvering for them to reach each other, and Arthur looks at his watch. 50 minutes on the ridge, ten minutes past when he and Eames had agreed to turn around.

“What happened,” Arthur says when they reach each other. He transfers his rope to Saito, clipping the karabiner across to his harness. Saito is definitely the most likely one to fall. His eyes are unfocused, and there’s blood clotted thickly around his ear.

“Rock fall. I saw something red, we agreed to go look. We were below the level of the ridge. It hit the radio out of my fucking hand, got him in the head.”

“Let’s get back up to the ridge.” Arthur tugs the rope, and gets an answering tug. Eames takes in the slack, the rope pulling them towards safely. “Follow the rope.” Between them they manage to drag Saito up the slope – too much weight for Dom on his own, Arthur can tell. Saito tries to help, levering himself up where he can.

The clouds are noticeably thicker when they get to the ridge. Eames stands up as soon as he sees them, and barely waits for them to get onto the ridgetop before he starts detackling the belay anchor.

“I think I saw Mal,” Dom says, as they push Saito the last few inches onto the path, and Arthur doesn’t even think, just lets Saito crumple onto the nearest rock and punches Dom in the mouth.

Dom staggers, but doesn’t fall.

“What the fuck-“

“She would be ashamed of you,” Arthur says, low and deadly. “Camp three, let’s go.” He hauls Saito up again.

“I’ll take him,” Eames says, pushing his broad shoulder under Saito’s other armpit. “You lead.” He looks at Dom. “You, tie on at the mid-point.” Dom opens his mouth, then closes it and does what he’s told, feeding though the rope between Arthur and Eames until he finds the centre mark. He ties a figure-of-eight knot, his fingers fumbling and, to Arthur, agonisingly slow, and clips it to his harness.

Arthur squeezes Eames’s free shoulder once, hard, and starts picking his way ahead through the snow. Camp three seems a long way away.


	11. Chapter 11

They stop after a quarter of an hour to switch, Arthur taking Saito and Eames taking point. Dom starts shivering after a couple of minutes, and Arthur tells him to keep moving.

“Open and close your hands, keep your fingers moving,” Arthur says tersely.

“It hurts,” Dom says slowly. Arthur readjusts Saito’s weight over his shoulders and bites back his initial reply. Dom sounds like he might have been injured as well, or at least like he’s in shock.

“You’re getting frostbite. Just do it.”

When they hit steeper ground, the stuff they’d had to actually climb to ascend, they rearrange again. Arthur lowers Eames, then Saito on the middle knot of the rope so that Eames can use his end to guide Saito down. Once Saito is detached he pulls the rope up and lowers Dom, then climbs down after them unprotected while Eames sorts out the ropes again.

“The radio,” Eames says suddenly, while handing off Saito again. Saito’s lips are going blue, but he’s staggering on gamely, keeps putting one foot in front of the other. “Yusuf’s probably going spare down at base.”

“Once we get to camp,” Arthur says. “Not like they can send help.”

“We could use some medical advice.”

“The best we can do is get to safe ground and hole up. If we’re all still-,” Arthur stops, starts again. “Once we’re there we can assess them properly.”

“We’ll make it,” Eames says, then tries to spit. He can’t gather enough saliva in his mouth to do it properly. He’s probably dehydrated as well as chilled, the way Arthur is.

“I could use some tea when we get there,” Arthur says, and Eames grimaces a smile.

“Knew you’d come round to loving tea eventually.”

They set off again. Arthur’s stopped checking his watch. They’re moving so slowly it’s painful, and every time he looks it seems like an hour has passed and they’re still nowhere near camp, though they’ve moved from the rock and ice of the higher ridge to an area covered in an even blanket of snow. He spots the icefall going over the left of the ridge, the one he and Eames had passed only a few hours ago, only ten minutes from camp three, when it starts to snow.

“Bunch up,” Eames calls back to him. “Follow my tracks.” The overhang of frozen snow that hangs out over the north face, the cornice, looks like solid ground until you step through it. Their risk of walking unwittingly over a sheer drop has just gone up. Eames will have to do some careful pathfinding. They’re so close to camp, it would be stupid to lose someone now.

Dom puts his shoulder under Saito’s other arm. Arthur looks at him, surprised, but doesn’t question it. Maybe Dom’s gotten over his shock, maybe he needs guidance from Arthur to keep walking in a straight line. They’ll sort it out at the tent.

They shuffle onwards like the world’s most miserable three-legged race, until there’s a muffled yell from up ahead, and Dom sits down suddenly.

“Rope’s gone tight,” Dom says, digging himself into the snow like a living deadman anchor. “Eames must have gone through the cornice.” The overhang of frozen snow that hangs out over the north face, the cornice looks like solid ground until you step through it.

“Shit,” Arthur says, remembering. “He gave me his prussik loops. He can’t haul himself up, he’s dangling in space.” He fumbles at his belt for his jumars. “Have to get these down to him.”

“Clip them on the rope – wait,” Dom says. “Tie Saito to me for the weight, you go forward and make sure they fall down to him. Give me your anchor too.”

“Yeah,” Arthur says, and thank fuck Dom is thinking at last because Arthur can’t see anything but the taut rope sawing through the snow under their feet, disappearing off into the snow-blurred distance. There’s a dull pain in his chest. He keeps one hand on the rope, following it uphill to the right until it leads over the edge, pulled hard against the solid ice underneath by Eames’s weight. He carefully clips his jumar kit into the rope beyond the edge, working the karabiner down until it hangs freely on the rope, and then dropping it, hearing the anodized metal clink as it flies out of view.

Now all he has to do is hope that the rope hangs straight down to Eames, that Eames didn’t hit his head or break an arm in the fall, that Eames has enough finger mobility left to fasten the jumars onto the rope – at least they’re better than fucking prussik loops, Jesus.

He looks at his watch. How long can they wait for Eames? He can’t be more than a quarter rope-length down, maybe less. It’s twenty feet, on a fine day it would take a couple of minutes. Add fifteen for difficulty, round up to twenty minutes.

It doesn’t sound very long.

If they wait for half an hour – will Saito still be conscious? If they wait for twenty-five minutes and Eames doesn’t show up, Arthur will have to get Dom and Saito loose from where they’re bedded down in the snow, counterweighting Eames. That will mean cutting the rope, letting Eames fall. He feels for the knife in his pocket, and feels a brief flash of despair on finding it still there. If he didn’t have the knife, they could just wait here. They would have to. It would be justified.

He trudges back to Dom and Saito, pulling his pack open and digging out a foil blanket, which he wraps around them both. Saito’s eyes keep fluttering shut.

Dom has two deadman anchors in now. Arthur looks at them and thinks about security, about risk. He thinks about Eames saying ‘-didn’t come up this mountain for a safe life’, and the decision is made so quickly he he’s barely aware of making it.

“I’m going after him,” Arthur says. “You got your knife? If neither of us is back in twenty - fifteen - twenty minutes, cut Eames’s rope and get to camp three.” He unclips Dom from the second anchor and gets out his second rope, the light one he uses for protection on traverses. It’s a bit too light for sustained abseiling, and a bit narrow for the gauge on the jumars. Lucky he has those prussik loops, he can just tie them a bit tighter and they’ll work fine for climbing back up. He bites back a laugh.

“You’re going to abseil over the edge?” Dom asks, refusing to believe the evidence of his eyes.

“Yep.” Arthur stamps the deadman down into the snow, as hard as he can.

“It’s a shit anchor,” Dom says.

“Yeah, well,” Arthur says. “Check the time. Twenty minutes. Count it.”

“Good luck,” Dom says. “We’ll be waiting.”


	12. Chapter 12

Arthur gets to the edge, steps one careful half-step sideways from Eames’s rope, and lowers himself gently down. Once he’s over he keeps one hand on Eames’s rope as a guide, and one hand on his own, which makes for a fast ride down. He sees Eames almost as soon as he’s over the edge, one gleaming jumar already on the rope. Eames is working one-handed, cradling the other hand to his chest.

Arthur slows gradually, remembering how precarious his anchor is.

“Want a hand?” he yells. The wind is spinning Eames slowly in space, and Arthur puts a hand on his shoulder to steady him, facing the rock that stretches sheer into the cold void beneath them, an unreachable two metres away. Eames looks completely stunned for a moment, and Arthur has a spike of terror – not another fucking concussion, please – before he realises that Eames had never expected a rescue attempt.

“I fucking love you,” Eames says, recovering. “Broke my hand.”

“Wanker,” Arthur says breathlessly, taking the other jumar away from him and clipping it on to his harness, then onto the rope. He then clips himself into Eames’s knot to link them, sending a silent mental apology to Dom for the extra weight that must be dragging him incrementally towards the edge.

“Still sounds wrong when you say it,” Eames mumbles, as Arthur starts hauling them up the rope. They gain about half a foot with every haul. Weight on foot, move harness jumar up, sit in harness, move foot jumar up, stand – this move is a pain, Arthur standing up in the loop and lifting Eames’s weight along with his own. It takes ten minutes of unrelenting effort to reach the lip of the edge. It’s definitely getting darker. He gets them as high as he can and then throws his torso sideways, bellyflops into the snow like a wounded seal. When he’s got his legs on solid ground he turns back, Eames still a deadweight on his harness, and grabs his uninjured hand to pull him up. They lie in the snow panting for a moment before Eames staggers up, hand still clutched to his chest, and starts wending his way towards the others.

Dom and Saito are a lot closer to the edge than they were when Arthur started abseiling down. Eames stares at them, and at the trench in the snow behind them.

“Oh good,” Dom says. “In another ten minutes I might have started to worry.”

“In another ten minutes you would have been off the fucking ridge after us,” Eames says.

“Eh,” Dom says. “Wouldn’t have made it to the camp without you two anyway.” He starts trying to pull himself up out of his groove in the snow, gently pushing Saito upright. “Wake up, Saito-chan.”

“I am not a schoolgirl,” Saito says blearily, but starts to move anyway.

“Last push, come on.” Between them, Eames and Dom manage to get Saito’s arms over their shoulders. Arthur’s leaning heavily on his ice axe.

“You first,” Eames says. “I think you might be last man standing, Arthur.”

Arthur stuffs his lightweight rope into his rucksack without bothering to coil it, and ties on to one end of the main rope.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Dom, but this is a terrible fucking holiday.” He starts walking towards where he thinks camp three is, taking out his compass to check the direction.

“Sorry,” Dom says.

“Whatever.” Arthur treads carefully, ignoring the silent urge to hurry. More haste, more falling off fucking mountains.

When the sees the rock wall of camp three through the blizzard, he thinks at first that it’s a mirage.

“Fuck me, we did it,” Eames says, stumbling so hard he falls to his knees. “Put up the tent, there’s a love.”

Arthur and Dom between them manage to get the tent up. Four men in a two-person tent is pretty crowded, but at least it’s warm. Arthur makes Dom lie down first, then piles Eames and Saito on top of him, carving out a tiny space in the entrance for the stove.

“I can’t breathe,” Dom wheezes.

“Good,” Arthur says. “You don’t deserve oxygen right now. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t,” Dom says. “I’m sorry. You’re right, she would have been ashamed of me.”

“She would have slapped you round the ear and called you an imbecile,” Arthur says. “Which you are. Ashamed might have been a bit strong.” He hands the first cup of tea to Saito, who manages to drink it unaided, the second to Eames, and then starts brewing the next lot.

“How’s your hand?”

“Not good,” Eames says thinly. “My first finger’s broken, plus a couple of the radials in my hand. Do we have anything in the way of a splint?”

“I’ll make something,” Arthur promises. “Before we sleep.” They shuffle around so that Dom can get his tea to his mouth. Arthur takes Eames’s cup and moans involuntarily as he takes his first sip of tea. He’d been more dehydrated than he thought.

“Darling, is this really the time?” Eames asks, amusement threaded with pain.

“I’m going to marry this tea,” Arthur says fervently. Then he remembers Yusuf, and scrabbles for his radio. “Oh fuck, base camp are going to be going apeshit by now.”

“Get medical advice,” Eames says, and closes his eyes.

“Base camp, come in.”

“This is base camp, how are you? Over.” Ariadne sounds deeply relieved. She must have been waiting next to the radio set.

“All alive, repeat, all alive at camp three, over.”

“Any injuries?”

“One concussion, one broken hand, frostbite all round,” Arthur says. “Request medical advice, over.”

“You fucking got it. It’s good to hear from you. Getting Yusuf now, over.”


	13. Chapter 13

Yusuf confirms what Arthur suspected, which is that there’s nothing they can do for Saito’s head injury except keep him warm and watered. His pupils are the same size and he hasn’t had the ‘pass out/lucid interval/pass out’ progression of an epidural hematoma. His colour is looking healthier, less waxy, now that he’s warmed up.

Arthur sabotages one of the flexible foam karrimats for Eames’s hand split, which is not so much a split as a protective bundle.

“Want me to cut the glove off? Over,” he asks Yusuf.

“No! You’ll never get it back on, and cold won’t help. Just cushion it.” There’s a rustle at the other end. “Hold on, Ariadne’s coming through.”

“Local military presence turns out to include a helicopter. They say they can evacuate you to a hospital from camp one. Think you can make it by tomorrow afternoon? Over.”

Arthur clutches the radio so hard it hurts his hand, relief flooding through him. “Yes, affirmative, that would be amazing. How did you manage that?”

“Saito doesn’t know it yet, but he’s buying them a new helicopter once he’s safe, over.”

Saito grunts, and raises one hand in a shaky thumbs-up.

“You are a genius,” Arthur says sincerely. “Thank you, over.”

“Get some pictures for my article, and get down in one piece. Make a triangle in the snow to signal for pick up, do you copy?”

“Triangle for pickup, I copy. We should get some sleep, over.”

“Stay warm. Over and out.”

*

Arthur set his alarm to wake them at first light, but it turns out to be a disturbed night for all of them, crammed in a too-small space with aches and pains all round. He’s awake to hear the alarm go off.

The climb down is probably faster than is strictly wise, but hey, they have a helicopter to catch. He lowers Eames carefully down the steep sections, then abseils after him, gaily abandoning his anchoring equipment in a trail down the mountains. Dom does the same for Saito, going ahead of them. Eames manages to fend off the mountainside with his feet and good hand during the lowers, though a couple of muffled curses carry through the still mountain air.

He takes a few photos for Ariadne - Eames's face, Dom and Saito getting set up for the lower, the brutal thrust of the ridge up behind them. It must be lack of sleep, he thinks later, but he sees that red flicker on the ridge again as they pass camp two. It’s closer to the summit this time, higher up. He’s been thinking about it, and he’s almost sure Mal was wearing a yellow jacket. Dom would know, but Arthur can’t ask, not while they’re working flat out to get down in time. It doesn’t matter anyway.

They get to the snowfield above camp one, footsore and exhausted, and Arthur’s barely laid out their ropes in a rough triangle before the sound of helicopter blades fills the air. A gentle rain begins to fall.

“Dom, when you went after her body… why did you say you saw something red?” Arthur asks quietly, covered by the chop-chop-chop of the helicopter approaching.

“Her red scarf,” Dom says simply. “The silk one she bought in Delhi.” Arthur remembers abruptly, like the pain of an old injury, the way she’d wound it around her neck and struck an exaggerated pose. So full of life, the way she laughed. He reaches for Dom, putting one hand on his shoulder in sympathy.

“Leave her here,” Arthur says, not looking at him, and goes to help get Eames and Saito winched up to the helicopter.

Dom looks up at the ridge, sketching a wave, then lets his hand drop and turns to follow Arthur.


	14. Chapter 14

Eames needs surgery for his hand, and a few days of intravenous antibiotics. Saito is monitored for a few days, then released to go home to Tokyo. Dom starts the journey back to base camp almost as soon as they reach the hospital in Siddharthanagar, leaving Arthur to watch over Eames and Saito. With Dom acting as support at base camp, Ariadne and Yusuf go up the mountain as far as camp two. Ariadne says grudgingly that she might have enough to salvage something for her article. Arthur doesn’t know what Dom tells her, or what she sees, but that flicker of red at the summit doesn’t show up in the published piece.

Arthur sits by Eames’s bedside in hospital, plays chess with him – cards being too unwieldy for a one-handed man - and books them matching tickets for the flight back to London. Eames is still wearing the hand splint by the time Ariadne’s article is published.

Arthur flips the copy of BMC magazine over the table to show Eames. They’re sitting in Eames’s flat in Kentish Town, amid the ruins of a full English breakfast. Eames glances at it, and pushes it away.

“Maybe later,” Eames says. “She’ll leave out all the important bits anyway. The ghost, the torrid romance, Dom being a shithead.”

“Torrid?”

“Well, all right, what do you want to call it? The epic and life-changing romance? The monumentally delayed love confession?”

“Oh God,” Arthur groans. “It just took me a while to warm up to you, okay? I only had one previous experience to go on, excuse me for not-“

“Wait, what?”

“Well – it’s not a big deal, I’m just not often sexually attracted to people. It hasn’t happened a lot.”

“It as in sex?” Eames is looking a little manic.

“I don’t have sex with people I’m not sexually attracted to, no,” Arthur says flatly.

“I… I’m very lucky, then,” Eames says. “And wondering if this means there are some things I could introduce you to, eventually. I would really quite like to introduce you to some things.”

“Smooth,” Arthur says, smiling into his coffee. “Do these things involve using both hands?” So far they’ve mostly confined themselves to kissing, as Arthur shuts down proceedings when Eames looks likely to try to use his still-healing right hand. It’s unfortunate that Eames is highly tactile and very, very right-handed. Even Arthur is starting to get a little frustrated.

“I’m aware this may be a bit forward,” Eames says, looking at Arthur’s mouth in a manner inappropriate for the breakfast table, “but what about if you tied my hand to the headboard?”

Arthur considers it for a long moment. Eames pointedly doesn’t fidget.

“All right,” Arthur says. He stands up and peels off his pyjama trousers, stepping out of them to walk naked to Eames’s bedroom. Eames follows swiftly, hopping a little as he takes off his boxers and leaves them crumpled on the carpet.

Arthur ends up tying Eames’s forearm to the arm of a chair, after determining that the headboard is too likely to injure his wrist.

“You worry too much.”

“I’m not explaining to Yusuf that I managed to permanently damage your dominant hand with ill-considered bondage. Do you want a blow job or not?”

“More than anything,” Eames says unhesitatingly, and opens his legs, slouching back into the chair like a living challenge. Arthur kneels and rubs his stubble along the inside of Eames’s thigh, mouthing at the thin skin stretched over his iliac crest.

“I love you,” Arthur murmurs, pushing his hands up Eames’s thighs to curl over his hipbones.

“I – me too,” Eames says, sounding suddenly vulnerable. “I love you too. Please-“

Arthur leans in to take the head of Eames’s cock into his mouth, sucking on it, gently teasing with his tongue till he can feel Eames’s left hand tremble a little where it’s tangled in his hair. Eventually, he’ll have to get on with his real life – planning the move back to London, getting another job, claiming his climbing kit back from Dom, finding out whether moving in with Eames is going to be a mistake or the smartest move of his life. Right now, he only has one thing – one person – to think about. He closes his eyes, and forgets everything except Eames, in front of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear commenters, I love you all with a pure, deep love. Thank you for your lovely words, which have restarted this fic and kept me going. Special thanks to CannibalHolocaust, kenopsia, SamanthaStephens and Suzierkew <33333


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